The Dream Society: How the Coming Shift from Information to Imagination Will Transform Your Business

Read the book after 20 years from publishing and loved it

The book is the result of 15 yrs work at the Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies. I bought it to read on my holiday but finished it two weeks beforehand! It made some really interesting points: * Man has been around for c.100,000yrs: 90,000 as hunter-gatherer, 10,000 as farmer, 200 in industry and maybe 30 in IT. This book provides a glimpse of what comes next! * We will see a move from the rational to the emotional. `The successful companies of the twenty-first century...besides meeting the social and emotional needs of employees...will want to cater to consumers' emotional and social needs' [e.g. Shopping Malls as Theme Parks?]. * Current accounting methods measure `the company's capital at night...when all employees have gone home'. The author discusses Intellectual Capital: salary negotiations as establishing an employee's value as a company asset and the `real cost of layoffs...just as if tossing computers out the window would destroy physical capital, layoffs involve throwing away human capital. If we are talking top-quality computers with modern software this is a bad idea.' * In a concept that may have significant employee training and development implications, the author quotes Tom Peters: `Brand yourself' and believes that `the "branded" employee will triumph over the Brand X employee...increase awareness about your existence and skills...'

Why do some people buy a watch at $ 10.000, when you can get a much more precise one at $ 10? Because time is not the essential thing - it's about dreams, lifestyles and adventure. Why is the automobile the "New Beetle" such a big success? Because it looks almost like the old one (apart from new technology). Why is the movie "Titanic" the greatest blockbuster of our time? Because it's a story about a ship, a journey into nostalgia, feelings and lifestyles of persons 87 years ago. Dreams, stories, lifestyles, feelings, adventure, nostalgia, care - you'll get all the questions and answers in this well-written and provocative book about the next 25 years in the affluent societies. It's difficult to find arguments against the many examples and facts in this amazing book. Just to mention two examples: according to the author, doctors will gradually be replaced by automation within the health care sector, but nurses will get their golden age because of the explosive need to provide for care in the coming years. And: "The story can be told with a whole range of products, the product themselves being secondary". This is the reason why people buy Marlboro, Nike, BMW, Rolex and other brands at a price many times the price for other more unknown products. There is always a story behind: adventure(Marlboro-man), lifestyle (Nike) or nostalgia (BMW-oldtimers). This well-structured book is not about utopia, it's about the changing patterns of our daily lives, and it's already happening...

This is an interesting and thought provoking book but I am afraid that I do not agree with the conclusion. Jensen argues that the next age after the information age will be the dream society. He ignores the facts. Economics is all about the allocation of scarce resources. We can not have a 'dream society' until the worlds resource problems have been addressed. As a result, the next age after the information age will have to be the quantum age, a period during which the world learns to change the vary structure of molecules themselves. Despite my reservations, I hope you enjoy the book anyway.

Rolf Jensen postulates an age where companies will have to differentiate themselves by creating stories about who they are, what they stand for, and who their customers will be when they become "part" of the story as consumers. Using the trends established by existing, successful organizations like Nike and Disney, Jensen paints a picture of marketing through consumer allegiance by imagination. For would-be futurists, this book is compelling. For ordinary business folk, this book gels all the trends and ideas you've been seeing lately, and makes sense of it all. For the rest of us -- the Dream Society articulates the need we humans have for stories, culture, and acceptance. This is an extraordinarily intriguing book. Even if you don't agree (or are afraid to imagine) the future scenarios Jensen presents, you'll be compelled to admit -- the Dream Society may really be here after all. A must-read!

広告のビジネス書のようでもあるけど、読み終えると、産業構造の転換、人・家族・社会・会社組織の今後の姿を読み解いた未来学者の幅広い内容に、次から次に引き込まれました。 「第一章 未来主義の概略とドリーム・ソサエティーへの道のり」と「第二章 ストーリーとストーリーテラーの市場」は、製造業から情報産業、次世代の物語産業の創造的な価値の時代の到来を知りました。 ｐ18 消費者は付け加えられたストーリーに普通より15から20％、余計にお金を出しても良いと思っているからです。ここに新しい重要なトレンドが存在することは確実でしょう。 本のタイトル「物語を売れ。」は、ここまでの話です。 それが、「第三章 厳しい労働から激しい楽しみ 会社から部族へ」、「第四章 愛する家族株式会社、そして新余暇時間」、「第五章 グローバル企業にとっての普遍ストーリー」と、固定観念の殻を割るように未来社会を考える。 「人生で最も重要なものは何か」「曖昧になる労働時間と余暇時間の境界」「2020年からは中国とインドの時代」「国家の情報独占の終焉」と、ネット時代の急激な普及を背景に、1999年に出版され、翻訳は2001年です。 関連図書 マーティン・リンストローム著 『なぜ、それを買わずにいられないのか』（文藝春秋2012年） ダニエル・ピンク著 『フリーエージェント社会の到来』（ダイヤモンド社2002年） アルビン・トフラー著『第三の波』（日本放送出版協会1980年）

This is an excellent book!!!

Worth reading it.You will learn so much from it and see the world different.Not always easy to read but worth it.

物語、つまりそこから心に浮かび上がるビジョン、夢。 それができる人間がこれから成功すると書いてある。 要は、想像力がある人になる必要がある。 この本を読んだあとは どうやったらその力を手に入れることができるだろうか？ と考えてみてはいかがだろうか？

訳が読みにくいです。 内容は読む価値ありの面白いものでした。４つ星あげたい所だが、なにしろ読みにくくて時間がかかったので、減点。 ３つ星評価です。